Music|Review: In ‘The Astronaut’s Tale,’ a Farm Boy Dreams of Flying to Mars

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Review: In ‘The Astronaut’s Tale,’ a Farm Boy Dreams of Flying to Mars

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From left, Lianne Gennaco, Eapen Leubner and Frank Basile in “The Astronaut’s Tale” at the Fishman Space at BAM Fisher.CreditCreditElizabeth Bick for The New York Times

By Vivien Schweitzer

Jan. 29, 2016

Jack Larson, who died in September, was well known for his portrayal of the cub reporter Jimmy Olsen on “The Adventures of Superman.” His less-heralded achievements included several opera librettos, including the one for Virgil Thomson’s “Lord Byron.”

After writing a new English translation of Stravinsky’s 1917 music theater piece “L’Histoire du Soldat” (“The Soldier’s Tale”), a parable about a fiddle-playing Russian soldier who gives his violin to the devil in exchange for wealth, Mr. Larson created an American update of the story called “The Astronaut’s Tale” (1998). It was presented by Encompass New Opera Theater at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s intimate Fishman Space on Thursday.

Billed as a chamber opera, the work, which features a spoken narration, straddles the boundary between musical theater and opera. Like “The Soldier’s Tale,” the piquant score for seven musicians by the Boston composer Charles Fussell is for septet and shifts meter frequently. At times it reflected Copland, Stravinsky and Britten, and included a few bars of Texas two-step. The imaginative use of percussion evoked faraway galaxies with more subtlety than the sometimes generic images of outer space featured in the production, otherwise effectively directed by Nancy Rhodes.

The plot involves a farm boy called Abel (here in an earnest performance by Eapen Leubner) who wants to become an astronaut and is given a calculator by a mysterious wandering peddler, who seems an innocuous figure despite having the sin-invoking name of Peccavit. The opera centers on the confrontation between religion and science, first explored in a duet between Abel and the peddler, charismatically rendered by the bass Frank Basile.

Abel’s girlfriend, Ann (charmingly sung by the soprano Lianne Gennaco,) worries that he no longer takes the Bible literally and wants him to settle down instead of dreaming of walking on Mars. “And why would Mars be billions of years old when the Bible says the earth is 10,000 years old,” she sings in one aria. Late in the opera, when she learns of his fate, she prays to God to take her, too, in a poignant duet with the peddler.

Even when librettos are sung in English, subtitles are often necessary, either because of the way the words are set or because the singers struggle to project over the orchestra. There were no titles provided here and none were needed — the words were intelligible throughout. What wasn’t clear was the point of view. The opera presents opposing arguments about science and religion but doesn’t take a stance on either, concluding instead with a vague and uncompelling musing on the afterlife.